Loved by corporations, Adam Smith does not reciprocate.

Adam Smith would have been appalled but not surprised by the AIG executive bonus debacle. He understood that the managers of a joint stock company do not have the same interests as the owners and are not likely to watch over other people's money the same way they do their own.

The directors of such companies, however, being the managers rather of other people's money than of their own, it cannot well be expected that they should watch over it with the same anxious vigilance with which the partners in a private copartnery [sic] frequently watch over their own. Like the stewards of a rich man, they are apt to consider attention to small matters as not for their master's honour, and very easily give themselves a dispensation from having it. Negligence and profusion, therefore, must always prevail, more or less, in the management of the affairs of such a company.

Book V, Chapter I (5th ed., 1789).